Top Releases:

BOO! Did I scare you? Well, if I didn’t, the lack of any interesting games probably will! This week’s top release is the horror title Until Dawn, a remake of the 2015 game of the same name. Billed as an “interactive drama”, Until Dawn puts players directly in control of a scary movie, watching a group of young adults attempt to survive a night in the eerie Blackwood Mountains. Told over a series of chapters, players will make a multitude of choices that all affect the game’s story and its ending, of which there are hundreds to see. It might not be the most exciting game this Fall, but it’s the perfect one to start your Halloween season.

Until Dawn (PC/PS5) – Releases Oct. 4^th

Developed by: Supermassive Games
Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment

In terms of actual, NEW, games, first we have the Action RPG Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream, a kind of boss rush game that is best enjoyed online. The trailer makes it seem like all you do is fight giant bosses in small arena’s, similar to what you might do in an MMO like Final Fantasy XIV.

For all you children’s cartoon fans out there, we’ve got a brand new SpongeBob Squarepants title, The Patrick Star Game which, if you couldn’t tell, is all about SpongeBob’s best bud, Patrick. While you might have expected this to be a typical platformer, The Patrick Star Game is an open world, sandbox title. Players are free to do whatever they want in this game, with the physics of the world being fairly over the top. A game about nothing gits pretty well with Patrick, let’s just hope it doesn’t get boring after a few minutes.

Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream (PC/PS5/Switch/Series X|S) – Releases Oct. 3^rd

Developed by: Dimps Corporation
Published by: Bandai Namco

SpongeBob Squarepants: The Patrick Star Game (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X}S) – Releases Oct. 4^th

Developed by: PHL Collective
Published by: Outright Games

Everything else:

• NHL 25 (PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Oct. 4^th
• Kill Knight (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Oct. 3^rd
• Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel (PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Oct. 4^th

Notable Releases from 10, 20, and 30 (and sometimes 40) years ago:

It’s time for notable releases and, look at that, we’ve got a game from 40 years ago to talk about! What’s that? It’s kind of racist? Shit. Well, at least the other three aren’t…I hope.

Starting things off, our 2014 notable release is the survival horror game Alien: Isolation. Set in 2137, 15 years after the film Alien, the game centers on Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley as she searches for answers about her mother’s disappearance. She learns that the flight recorder from her mother’s ship, the Nostromo, has been recovered and sets out to procure it. When Amanda arrives to the space station where the device is being held, she discovers that the data is corrupted and, of course, there is a deadly alien aboard that is systematically killing everyone on board.

While previous video games based on the Alien franchise would often emulate the style and tone of James Cameron’s 1986 action film Aliens (including the ill-fated 2013 game Aliens: Colonial Marines), the developers of Alien Isolation were more interested in making a game that followed more closely to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Developed by Creative Assembly, who are best known for the Total War series, the team felt that it would be a lot more interesting to try and sneak past one alien with very few weapons instead of trying to kill hundreds with a massive arsenal.

While the player will mostly play hide & seek with the alien, in true Alien fashion, there are also evil humans to contend with, namely those from the Weyland-Yutani corporation and their psychotic androids. While the player will occasionally gain access to guns and incendiary devices, the best course of action is often just staying out of sight and letting your enemies move past you.

Alien: Isolation was a hit with critics, receiving generally positive reviews. The game was praised as a return to form for the franchise after the dismal Colonial Marines, with many critics praising Creative Assembly for mimicking the Scott film over Cameron’s. The setting, the sounds, the technology, all of it felt real and lived in, which critics found delightful. However, they didn’t quite like the Amanda Ripley or any of the various crew members and androids she encounters. They felt as if everyone was underdeveloped and that you were never given a chance to care about someone before they were inevitably killed by the alien.

Despite the criticisms, Alien: Isolation was named Game of the Year by PC Gamer, The New Statesman, and Kotaku Australia, Best Horror Game by GamesRadar and Rock, Paper, Shotgun, as well as various technical awards and nominations from many other outlets. Talks of a sequel have come up over the lasts ten years, but nothing concrete has ever materialized. In the 2024 film Alien: Romulus, the game’s emergency phones, which act as save points, appear as easter eggs for fans and to also signal upcoming danger. Alien: Isolation is a proper scary horror game that will raise your anxiety to levels you couldn’t imagine. I strongly recommend giving this game a try, especially during Halloween, you won’t go wrong.

From 2004, we’ve got a Nintendo classic that might be one of the company’s best games ever made, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Often referred to by fans and critics as the best Paper Mario game, Thousand-Year Door finds Mario searching for Peach after she is kidnapped by a group of aliens known as the X-Nauts. The second entry in the series, Thousand-Year Door went to heights that other entries in the series just could not match.

For critics and players, Thousand-Year Door just has a certain “it factor”. It setting, characters, dialog, and story are all on point. The whimsical nature of the game helped set it apart from other, more serious games in the genre, though it did not skimp on the challenge. The stellar critical reception to Thousand-Year Door was matched by its sales, where it go on to sell nearly 2 million units worldwide, making it the 12th best selling GameCube Game of all time, and the system’s best selling RPG of all time (well, depending on your definition of RPG, as some people think Pokémon Colosseum is one).

During the end of year accolades, Thousand-Year Door was named Console RPG of the Year by the DICE Awards and was nominated in several categories across multiple outlets. Over the last 20 years, the game has also appeared on multiple “Best of…” lists, and often comes up in conversation when discussing the greatest video games of all time. In May of 2024, a remake of the game would appear on the Nintendo Switch, updating the graphics and adding some quality of life improvements. While the series has really only been downhill since Thousand-Year Door, we can always go back to this classic (or play the Switch remake) and remember when things used to be really, really good.

From 1994, we’ve got the action platformer Earthworm Jim from developer Shiny Entertainment and publisher Playmates. If the name Playmates is familiar to you, well they are the company behind the highly successful line of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys that lines store shelves throughout the late 80’s and early 90’s. Seeing the success of Sonic the Hedgehog, Playmates wanted to jump into the video game business and hired Shiny Entertainment to create a mascot game for them.

After brainstorming a few ideas, one employee, and artist named Doug TenNapel, presented the team with a sketch of a character he called “Earthworm Jim”. From there, the ideas began to flow and Shiny bought the character from TenNapel and they got to work on the game. Earthworm Jim is a side scrolling, action platformer in which the players take on the role of Jim, an earthworm who discovers a special super suit after it falls from the sky. It gives him the ability to walk, talk, and move like a humanoid person, and he must use all of this wits and skill to avoid being captured by the many enemies that want to steal the suit from him.

Earthworm Jim was developed simultaneously for the Genesis and Super Nintendo, however lead programmer Dave Perry would typically build the level first on the Genesis before handing the code off to another programmer, Nick Jones, who would rebuild it on the SNES. There are only minor differences between the two versions, mostly audio and visual related, though the Genesis game does contain an extra level which, apparently, was added at the request of Sega in return for a lower price on their cartridges.

Earthworm Jim was a huge hit with critics and players when it came out. The Genesis version would launch first, with the SNES version hitting stores only a few days later. After a year on the market, the game would sell over 1 million copies, a strong showing back in 1994/1995. Critics absolutely loved the game, citing the beautiful “hand drawn” graphics, addictive & innovative gameplay, long levels, outrageous humor, biting satire, and the overall sense that it was a video game made for hardcore gamers by hardcore gamers.

The success of the Earthworm Jim led to two direct sequels, Earthworm Jim 2 and Earth Worm Jim 3D, as well as seeing Jim appear as a playable character in Clay Fighter 63 1/3. In 1995, an animated series based on the game would run for two seasons on The WB, starring Dan “Homer Simpson” Castellaneta as Jim. The show was also overseen by Jim’s creator, Doug TenNapel who, I can’t really talk about anymore without mentioning that, in later years, would be better known as a right wing blowhard. Okay, there, I said it, we can all move on.

Despite the questionable political leaning’s of its creator, Earthworm Jim is a classic video game featuring one of the most popular and recognizable video game mascots of the 1990’s. The game is easily playable today on PC & modern consoles, and I highly recommend giving it a try. TenNapel might rub you the wrong way, but there were a whole bunch of other people who worked on the game that aren’t total creeps. You know, like the guy who did the music, um, let’s see, Tommy Tallarico; oh.

We’re not done yet, folks! From 1984, we’ve got the arcade game Chinese Hero which would eventually be renamed Kung-Fu Heroes in a subsequent port to the Famicom & NES. Developed by a Japanese company called Culture Brain, Chinese Hero is a beat ’em game that actually predates what many refer to as the first beat ’em up, Kung-Fu Master. However, Chinese Hero had a single screen, top down view as opposed to the side scrolling view that the genre would eventually be known for, but the ideas were there.

In the game, one or two players punch and kick their way through a slew of enemies as they attempt to retrieve stolen artifacts and save the beloved Princess Min-Min. That’s about it, folks. Chinese Hero was good, simple fun that, unfortunately, leans heavily into Asian stereotypes, lowering its appeal as the years go on. This, however, did not stop Nintendo from releasing the NES Kung-Fu Heroes in the Nintendo Switch Online library of games, so feel free to check it out for yourself and decide if it’s right for you.

Stepping away from games and into the world of movies, 2014 saw the release of the David Fincher crime thriller Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck as a sleazy husband who may or may not have killed his wife who has mysteriously vanished. Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the screenplay), Gone Girl is a mesmerizing and thoroughly crowd pleasing “whodunit” that will have you questioning things until the very end. I highly, HIGHLY recommend this movie.

From 2004, we’ve got the existential comedy/drama I Heart Huckabees from director David O. Russell. Today, Russell is a well known director who’s put out some of the biggest Oscar bait films of the last 10-15 years like The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, and American Hustle. In 2004, he was known as the guy who made the quirky war film Three Kings and the indie comedy Flirting With Disaster. With Huckabees, Russell tried to swing for the fences with an way, WAY out there script about a guy (played by Jason Schwartzman) who is going through an existential crisis and hires “existential detectives” (played by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to figure out…why.

This already very weird concept was made even more confusing with its huge ensemble cast that all just kind of act like assholes to each other the whole movie. In my younger, more pretentious years, I thought I was a genius for being one of the few people who liked this movie. You know, because I “got it”. Really, I was just a star fucker who liked seeing all of these actors together in one movie. There were old major stars like Hoffman and Tomlin, and new major stars like Mark Wahlberg and Jude Law. It had indie stars like Schwartzman and Naomi Watts and foreign stars like Isabelle Huppert, as well as up and coming stars like Isla Fisher and Jonah Hill.

I Heart Huckabees is largely forgotten today because of how poorly it was received. Angry, elitist, and overwhelmingly confusing, I Heart Huckabees is borderline unwatchable. It’s a nice coat of paint on the crappiest car you’ll ever buy.

1994’s notable film was one of the biggest critical hits of the year, Quiz Show. Directed by Robert Redford, Quiz Show told the true story of two men, Herb Stempel and Charles Van Doren, and how both were wrapped up in a major cheating scandal on the game show Twenty-One. Another great thriller, though far less violent and sexual than Gone Girl, Quiz Show will also have you on the edge of your seat as politicians and law enforcement close in on the perpetrators of the scandal. For me, this was one of the first times I remember thinking that a movie with a lot of talking could be just as exciting as a movie with a lot of action. It was my first “prestige” film.

Our last notable film comes from 1984 and it’s a big one, James Cameron’s breakthrough hit, The Terminator. Starring a still relatively unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular killer robot, he is sent back in time on a mission to kill a woman named Sarah Conner. Why, you ask? Well Sarah will give birth to a son named John, the leader of the human resistance in a future controlled by robots. To protect her, a soldier named Kyle Reese is also sent back in time and is, SPOILER, the father of John Conner!

I mean, we all know this story, right? The Terminator is one of the most popular film franchises of all time. While it may have put out a string of terrible movies over the last 20 years, the first film and its (superior) sequel are cinema classics, destined to be watched by generations of action, sci-fi, and horror fans.

Moving away from films, it’s time to check out the notable albums; first up, 2014’s You’re Dead! by Flying Lotus. The eclectic producer/DJ/rapper, once again, put out one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year, appearing on multiple “Best of…” lists, though it would only get one Grammy nomination, Best Dance Recording, losing to a track by Skrillex and Diplo feat. Justin Beiber; lame.

2004’s notable album one that I really enjoy, De La Soul’s The Grind Date. While I can’t say that I know every track on this album by heart, one that I know very well is “Rock Co.Kane Flow”, which features guest vocals by rapper MF Doom. Other featured artists on the album included Flava Flav, Ghostface Killah, and Common, as well as film director Spike Lee.

Like You’re Dead!, The Grind Date was a critical darling in 2004, ending up on multiple “Best of…” lists at the end of the year. Despite the positive critical reception, the album failed to gain any Grammy nominations, which is BULLSHIT. Anyway.

1994’s notable album continues the trend of punk rock (or in this case, punk rock adjacent) bands blowing up in the middle part of the decade with The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ Question the Answers. While they wouldn’t hit the mainstream until the release of their 1997 album Let’s Face It, The Bosstones started to gain notoriety around this time with a successful EP and full length album both released in 1993, that allowed Question the Answers to reach #138 on the Billboard Top 200.

The success of the album allowed The Bosstones to be more prominently featured on MTV, notably on The John Stewart Show and 120 Minutes, as well as getting picked to contribute songs to, and appear in, the film Clueless. After playing the main stage at Lollapalooza and Warped Tour, the band would take a break from touring to write and record the songs for Let’s Face It, catapulting them to the stratosphere, if only for a little bit.

Alright, we’ve made it, the final notable album and it’s one I think you’re gonna like, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, the debut album from British pop group Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Odds are that you are very familiar with the albums lead single “Relax”, my favorite song about waiting until the right moment to shoot cum out of your dick. The song was, as you might imagine, highly controversial, particularly in the UK where the BBC banned the song from airplay. Well, you know what happens when you tell the kids they can’t have something.

The single for “Relax” was released a full year prior to the album, in October 1993, and quickly went on to become one of the biggest selling records in the UK, and certainly one of the best selling records of the decade. Eventually, the BBC ban would be lifted as the song was being played regularly on other radio stations around the UK, Europe, and the United States. A few months later a second single, “Two Tribes” would be released and do well, but nowhere near the popularity of “Relax” (personally, I prefer “Two Tribes”).

For a time, the band denied that “Relax” had anything to do with sex but, come on, people aren’t stupid. It’s very clear what the song’s lyrics are about and eventually the band embraced it and played it up. In what I’m sure was incredibly shocking at the time, Welcome to the Pleasuredome’s marketing and album art were not just sex positive but gay sex positive. Singer Holly Johnson, however, noted in his 1994 autobiography that he struggled for years about accepting his own homosexuality and how he was perceived. I’d like to think that the overtly homosexual themes on Pleasuredome were his way of just kind of saying “fuck it” to the world and using art as a way to express himself without consequence.

Folks, I fucking love this album. Welcome to the Pleasuredome is pure, hedonistic bombast and listening to it makes me want to jump around and dance like an idiot. While Frankie Goes to Hollywood is nowhere near what you would consider a punk band, their complete disregard for mainstream, societal norms puts them up there with the most punk of the punk rockers, in my opinion. Fuck the system, fuck decorum, fuck decency. Frankie Goes to Hollywood rules, and if you’ve always ignored them because you thought they were some dumb pop band, then you fucked up.

Alien: Isolation (PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One) – Released Oct. 7^th, 2014: Wiki Link

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GameCube) – Released Oct. 11^th, 2004: Wiki Link

Earthworm Jim (Genesis/SNES) – Released Oct. 1994: Wiki Link

Chinese Hero/Kung-Fu Heroes (Arcade) – Released Oct. 1984: Wiki Link

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